Program Snapshot

The Common Fund's Human Microbiome Project (HMP) developed research resources to enable the study of the microbial communities that live in and on our bodies and the roles they play in human health and disease.

Microscopic study of the healthy human body has demonstrated that microbial cells outnumber human cells by about ten to one. Prior to the start of the HMP, this abundant community of human-associated microbes remained largely unstudied, leaving their influence upon human development, physiology, immunity, and nutrition almost entirely unknown. The HMP was established with the mission of generating research resources, which were rapidly and broadly shared, enabling comprehensive characterization of the human microbiota and their metabolic capabilities and analysis of their role in human health and disease. The information generated by HMP is now available worldwide for use by investigators and others in efforts to understand and improve human health.

The first phase of HMP was focused on the development of DNA sequence datasets and computational tools for characterizing the microbiome in healthy adults and in people with specific microbiome-associated diseases. An Ethical, Legal and Societal Implications (ELSI) component of the program evaluated issues which arise from human microbiome research. The second phase of HMP, known as the integrative HMP or iHMP, was focused on creating integrated datasets of multiple biological properties from both the microbiome and the host over time in people with specific microbiome-associated diseases. The long-term objective of iHMP was to develop datasets and tools that the community can use to evaluate which biological properties of the microbiome and host yield important new insights in understanding human health and disease.

*The key findings of the second phase of the HMP (iHMP) are due to be published in 2019.

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This page last reviewed on March 6, 2019

Program Transition

The Human Microbiome Project has transitioned from Common Fund support. Common Fund programs are strategic investments that achieve a set of high-impact goals within a 5-10 year timeframe. At the conclusion of each program, deliverables transition to other sources of support or use by the broader scientific community.

The HMP was supported by the Common Fund from 2007 to 2016. Non-HMP investment in microbiome research at the NIH has increased over forty-fold since the inception of the HMP and spans over 20 of the NIH Institutes and Centers. Additional information about the growth of microbiome research can be found in a publication analyzing the total NIH microbiome portfolio from 2007 to 2016. For more information about the microbiome research that is currently being supported please see the Trans-NIH Microbiome Working Group page.

Please note that since the HMP is no longer supported by the Common Fund, the program website is being maintained as an archive and will not be updated on a regular basis.

Research Enabled by HMP Generated Data

The data generated by the HMP project have allowed researchers to answer numerous questions about the way the microbiome interacts with our bodies and our health. Examples of the research enabled by HMP can be found here.